We chat with author Jen Ferguson about Those Pink Mountain Nights, which explores the hurt of a life stuck in past tense, the hum of connections that cannot be severed, and one week in a small snowy town that changes everything.
Hi, Jen! Can you tell our readers a bit about yourself?
Hi friends and foes! I’m Jen Ferguson (she/her). I’m the author of The Summer of Bitter and Sweet and the brand new Those Pink Mountain Nights, both with Heartdrum/HarperCollins. My favorite ice cream flavor is mint chocolate chip and my favorite pizza topping is pineapple. Yes, pineapple.
When did you first discover your love for writing and stories?
I am very bad at math. This is a known fact about me. Do not rely on me to do the math for anything.
Another known fact, I was the girl in high school who was writing novels in her basement bedroom on her desktop instead of causing havoc with her friends. Okay, that’s lies. There was some havoc-causing.
Quick lightning round! Tell us the first book you ever remember reading, the one that made you want to become an author, and one that you can’t stop thinking about!
The first book I remember vividly, one that I read on my own, was Caroline B. Cooney’s The Face on The Milk Carton. Absolutely haunted even though in Canada we didn’t do milk cartons, so we didn’t have faces on them.
Every single book made me want to become an author! I cannot pick just one! Don’t make me! I’ll cry!
These days, as selfcare or a survival strategy to calm my climate grief/anxiety/covid grief/anxiety, I think a lot about Kindle Unlimited universe romance novels. It’s bananas over there. Even when the world’s ending, it’s sexy, sexy bananas.
Your latest novel, Those Pink Mountain Nights, is out now! If you could only describe it in five words, what would they be?
Found family, pizza, activism & #MMIWG2S
(Unpacking the hashtag for those of you who need it: Missing, Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls and Two-Spirit People).
What can readers expect?
Empire Records if it were a pizza shop meets #NoMoreStolenSisters, where an uptight-totally-depressed Native girl has to work with a laughs-about-everything Native boy and a rich, ridiculous white girl trying to escape her abusive parents’ orbit to find a missing Cree and Black teen the police have stopped looking for and to save Pink Mountain Pizza from bad capitalists.
Big found family vibes.
It’s winter, not summer. Bring on the cold!
The story takes place in one week.
Where did the inspiration for Those Pink Mountain Nights come from?
Three things.
When I was 16, I worked at a takeout pizza shop on the Canadian prairies with a bunch of teens. The owners pretty much let us have the run of the place. It was very messy and very fun and also we sold and delivered pizza.
In my early 20s, I wrote a short screenplay about a pizza shop, and it needed a name, and so because alliteration is wonderful, Pink Mountain Pizza happened.
The third thing is the on-going human rights crisis happening in Canada, the US and Mexico. I would encourage you to look into what local advocacy groups are doing in your area to support Native women, girls and Two-Spirit people. I could quote a bunch of statistics at you, but truly, the best thing you can do is find out where you can support local Native nations in their actions to protect women, girls and two-spirit people with your time, money and energy.
Were there any moments or characters you really enjoyed writing or exploring?
The tender scenes. The scenes where prickly people are soft. The moments where characters who have misunderstood each other for so very long finally really see one another for the first time.
Those Pink Mountain Nights delves into some difficult topics. How did you approach this when writing?
You can only ever write about the real world with nuance, empathy, and care. Because these aren’t just difficult topics, they are the things teens (and well, the rest of us) are going through all the time. Books are entertainment, yes. But they can also be much more than that. I try to remember that stories are found in the layers and in the nuance, not in the topic or subject itself.
This is your second published novel! What are some of the key lessons you have learned between writing the two?
Ha! I’ve learned I know nothing.
In any other activity, the more you do it, the more you learn, right? That’s basically life. You do and you learn and you apply the do to more learn.
Well with novel writing, every time you do it, it’s completely new again. It’s unfair, but you bring none of your previous how-to-write-a-novel-knowledge with you to the next book. Why? How? I cannot tell you.
I can only tell you it’s true.
But I’ve learned things around the publishing of books. Like, keep your eyes on your own paper and that you need a friend you can DM when you’re feeling extra feels about publishing to talk on the downlow in a private.
What’s next for you?
Hop in friends and foes, we’re hiking the Pacific Crest Trail. If you’re lucky, there may be bears. A Constellation of Minor Bears (Heartdrum/HarperCollins) is scheduled for Fall 2024.
And, spoiler alert, you might need you passport for my 4th YA novel, this one currently code named TheEuroTripBook, which should hit shelves in the Fall of 2025.
Lastly, do you have any book recommendations for our readers?
Yes, so many! But I’ll limit myself to three:
Edward Underhill’s next YA, This Day Changes Everything, out in early 2024.
Jamie Pacton’s next YA, The Absinthe Underground, also out in early 2024.
Both of these books are gay!
And Hannah Sawyerr’s debut novel-in-verse, All the Fighting Parts, is out a week after this interview publishes. Please support her! She’s a star!
